The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may sho...w up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard absolute opt...imism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things; but, imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher. All claim to special righteousness awakens in me that scorn and anger from which a philosophical mind should be free.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty,--the Better, the Best. The first and worse races are dead. ...The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of the higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upwards towards consciousness; the trees are i...mperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

... if there are no waving flags and marching songs at the barricades as Walter marches out with his little battalion, it is not b...ecause the battle lacks nobility. On the contrary, he has picked up in his way, still imperfect and wobbly in his small view of human destiny.... He becomes, in spite of those who are too intrigued with despair and hatred of man to see it, King Oedipus refusing to tear out his eyes, but attacking the oracle instead. He is that last Jewish patriot manning his rifle at Warsaw.... He is Anne Frank, still believing in people; he is the nine small heroes of Little Rock; he is Michelangelo creating David and Beethoven bursting forth with the Ninth Symphony. He is all these things because he has finally reached out in his tiny moment and caught that sweet essence which is human dignity, and it shines like the old star-touched dream that is in his eyes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse.... By itself, the law can never create anything better.... Establishing respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is a job for people and not for laws and institutions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »